Barbed wire is often used to provide enclosures and to mark property boundary lines. Barbed wire is typically provided on spools and is installed by unrolling and securing the wire to wood or metal posts that surround the area to be enclosed. This process is often carried out by hand and requires the spools to be lifted and the wire to be unrolled, pulled tight, and then mounted to the posts. This process is time consuming and labor intensive because it typically requires two or more workers. The task is made more difficult due to the weight of the spools as well as the often-rugged conditions where the wire is installed.
Various devices have been created to facilitate this unrolling process. Some devices were mounted to hand-drawn carts and other devices were mountable to vehicles (such as a tractor), which enable the wire to be unspooled as the vehicle moves. However, these devices are typically large and cumbersome and cannot be disassembled into smaller components for easier transport and storage when not in use. Additionally, many vehicle-mounted devices provide only a single point of connection to the vehicle, such as at the trailer hitch only, and all of the weight is borne by this single point of contact, which often leads to failure of the device at that point of contact.
What is needed, therefore, is an apparatus that can be mounted to a vehicle and have two or more mounting locations and that is configured to be at least partially disassembled for easier storage and transport.